Mindless Ones

I can only apologise if the title offends; it’s not intended to, but it does seem a little risque and I’ve kind of realised I’m not so sharp as I had thought on racial politics this week. The implications for me, sexual orientalism and gender bias are pretty disconcerting therefore. (Secret origin: my username is actually derived from the country of my birth.)

The notion here has its genesis in Douglas Wolk’s initial SavCrit review of the latest installment of Batman, #678 – it’s true! Mindless Ones covers really all your Batman and Grant Morrison needs several times over. Tune in shortly for more BatMoz coverage than you can possibly handle. I then get irked in the comments and Marc ‘I am NOT the Beastmaster‘ Singer talks me back off the ledge of flipping out, saying some shit I don’t even believe and schools me, unabrasively, on how it be. I invite him here to extend the conversation and it’s a blogversation or some other hideous neology. A blogover. In the interests of making it a blogevent, here’s Jog’s review (which I’ve already invoked not once, but twice) and our own amypoodle‘s. Here’s Tucker Stone’s, just for fun.

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It seems like an awfully long time since we found ourselves under the Ultimate Man’s protection. Think back. Waaaay back to the mid-90’s. The comics industry was beginning to drag itself out of a self-inflicted slump of pointless speculation and multiple foil variant covers. Chains and guns were beginning to lose their appeal and the world was rotating towards a newer, shinier vision of superheroes. Pop, rather than Metal was going to be the order of the day in the lead up to the Millenium it would seem. Superheroes were going to be fun again. No more torturing paedophiles or deacpitating rapists. At the forefront of this movement we have Waid’s hyper-fun Flash and Impulse comics; Busiek’s Astro City with it’s progressive nostalgic vision of meta-comics; Robinson’s Starman that sought to build an engrossing and believable mythos for his pet character, whilst never forgetting that being a superhero is first and foremost fucking skill. Moore was shaking off the dust of self-publishing and gearing up his ABC assault. Miller’s DK2 lurked on the horizon ready to introduce his bezerko psychedelic bigfoot parable on the world. And somewhere lurking at the sidelines was Morrison and Millar’s AZTEK.

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And I am that beholder.

Comics bought and read on Saturday the 5th of July 2008.

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Other comics that came out LAST week.

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Persepolis, graphic novel and movie reviewed.

Autobiography has become the life blood of mid-ground comic books. Sometimes the lives recalled are woven into the fabric of dramatic and horrific events of global historical importance, sometimes the events described are decidedly quotidian. In American Splendor (Vertigo, 2008 ) – which often immortalises lives of no particular consequence other than the fact that they are being lived by human beings – author Harvey Pekar rants, ““I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life I’m not proud of but at least…” and then lists such non-acts as “never got high and shot my wife in the head” and “never conned my country into a needless war to boost my ego”.

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Comics bought and read on Saturday the 21st of June 2008.

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It was with surprisingly little fanfare that Tank Girl made her return to comics last year. I guess being such a zeitgeist shagging style icon of the 90’s might dilute her current hipster status and subsequent fiscal worth. Not to mention having an absolute mega-bomb of a movie hanging around like a a stinking albatross. (Seriously, I don’t understand how a movie featuring Ice-T as a Kangaroo could be bad, but that piece of cinematic dogshit achieves it in spades). But when IDW resurrected the franchise I for one was glad to see her and the gang back (relatively) unchanged and unscathed.

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Critic smash stupid Hulk movie

Those of you who saw the first Hulk movie back in 2003 will no doubt recall how Marvel’s less-than-jolly green giant was developed into a sensitive family drama in which Oedipal conflicts were fought out between an irradiated Bruce Banner and his amazing absorbing Dad who climactically transformed into a large translucent green green jellyfish as if to demonstrate the diffusion of phallocentric power in the face of sensitive new age masculinity. Or something like that.

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Comics bought and read on Saturday the 7th of June 2008

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